


The Supernatural Surgeon

by mommymuffin



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Abduction, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Horror, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Dark, Dark Stiles, Dead People, Dissection, Disturbing Themes, Domestic Fluff, Fictional science, M/M, Mad Science, Mad Scientists, Madness, Monsters, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Psychological Horror, Psychopaths In Love, Scientist Stiles Stilinski, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2014-10-31
Packaged: 2018-02-23 07:21:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2539187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mommymuffin/pseuds/mommymuffin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek hears the muted whirring, overlapped by the sick, meaty, crunch of flesh and bone being forcefully separated from flesh and bone.<br/>He jerks back and tunes his hearing out, focusing instead on the rapid thrum of his own heartbeat, the salty smell of his fear-sweat.<br/>The screaming stops about forty minutes later.<br/>Derek doesn't want to think about what that means.</p><p>(A fic in celebration of Halloween. Stay spooky, readers.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Supernatural Surgeon

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, folks, here's the deal: I wanted to write a fic for Halloween and this is what came of it.
> 
> Disclaimers:  
> 1\. It's a fic for Halloween. It's creepy and freaky and weird, okay? Approach with caution.  
> 2\. This was written in less than two days, in a notebook, with a PEN, and hastily typed up, so forgive me my errors.  
> 3\. I know jack-squat about science. This story is fictional and so is the science. Suspend your disbelief here, people.
> 
> You've been warned. 
> 
> (Will resume "Breathe Me" ASAP!)

The last thing Derek remembers is standing inside the burnt-out husk of his childhood home, a steely determination settling in his gut to find out who has been here disturbing the ashes.

The next thing he knows he's waking up chained to a wall spreadeagle, a line of mountain ash on the ground framing him. He peers out into the room, vision blurry for a split second before it focuses and he sees where he is. He recognizes this room. It's one of the chambers in the underground tunnels the Hales had used to hide their secrets away from the world.

Who the hell could have brought him here?

That gets answered soon enough when a tall, lanky kid, pale skin scattered with moles and clear amber eyes that don't seem quite right somehow, waltzes into the room.

His gaze alights on Derek and his expression fills up with a dark delight, when he sees that his captive is looking back at him.

"Ah. You're awake," he says. He can't be much more than sixteen or seventeen, but the grin that peels his lips back from his teeth looks like that of an experienced predator.

He steps up to the edge of Derek's prison and leans in a little like he's sharing something with his most trusted confidant. "Welcome. You'll be here indefinitely so we may as well get to know each other. My name is Stiles. What's yours?"

Derek doesn't respond, glares silently up at him in defiance.

Stiles pouts. "Well, you're no fun, are you?"

He shrugs as if it doesn't matter to him one way or the other, then moves over to a table covered in jars and various instruments used for poking, prodding, and _cutting_.

"We'll just move on to the next part then, shall we?" Stiles picks up a soldering gun. He inspects it idly, focus solely on its sleek lines while he speaks. "Which is finding out what you are.

"Now, we can do this the hard way," he says with a tilt of his head toward the gun, eyes cutting over to Derek, "or the easy way. All up to you, buddy. So I'll go ahead and ask: what are you? There. Your turn."

Derek remains stonily silent, glare at a maximum.

Stiles sighs, makes a face like this pains him. Which Derek highly doubts. "Fine. Your choice. We'll do it the hard way."

The teen saunters over, expression dead, eyes hollow. The trigger on the soldering gun clicks loudly and then searing pain is lancing through Derek's bicep.

 

Derek does his best not to scream, grits his teeth and clenches his jaw shut. It just makes the smell of burning flesh that he drags in with every breath that much worse, the caustic scent of flesh peeling away under heat unbearable. Stiles burns four holes into his arm before Derek finally can't take it anymore.

He opens his mouth to let out a furious cry. His fangs lengthen and his eyes flash and suddenly the pain is gone as swiftly as it came.

Stiles clucks his tongue, looking at Derek for all the world like he's the biggest disappointment he's ever seen. "A werewolf." He sighs heavily. "I've _had_ werewolves. _Plenty_ of werewolves. I was hoping for something different. Oh, well. Maybe next time."

Chest heaving, Derek watches him carefully as the boy places the gun back on the table and shuffles through the jars briefly. He produces one that holds a vibrant purple powder; Derek has a sinking feeling that he knows exactly what it is.

The human pops the lid, tumps a little into his palm and looks at Derek evenly. "I'm sure I'll find a use for you," he says and then brings his palm to his mouth and blows.

 

When next he wakes, Derek is on a cold, stone floor, his limbs sprawled out messily. There's a low grade, buzzing noise and quick glance up confirms that it's a single light bulb hanging from a cracked fixture in the ceiling. These tunnels fell into disrepair long ago after the demise of the Hale Pack, but it seems this interloper, _Stiles_ , has them in at least partial working order again.

A bitter scent reaches his nose and with some effort Derek manages to turn his head toward the door. It's covered in crawling veins of wolf's bane, vine after vine covering the moldy wood.

Derek doesn't remember wolf's bane ever growing on a vine, but he's too tired to dwell on it, so he let's his eyes slip closed again.

 

After properly taking in his surroundings, Derek can only come to one conclusion: this cell was not made for him. It was premeditated and carefully thought out. It was made in _preparation_ of someone _like_ Derek coming along, long before Derek himself arrived.

It's obvious that the wolf's bane has been there a while, well entrenched in the dirty trough above the door that holds its roots. Some plants have veered off course, growing into and through the crevices of rock that make up the room's architecture, pushing their way through absolutely anything to thrive the way climbing vines are prone to doing.

That human evidently knows enough about werewolves to devise this room. Stiles had said he's 'had werewolves' before. Whatever that means. It at least translates into Stiles understanding the effect of the plant on Derek's kind. The overbearing presence of the poisonous flower will keep Derek weakened. Easily managed. But will have no lasting effects on his physiology unless injected into the bloodstream or ingested.

At least death will always be an option out of here.

 

Turns out Derek couldn't grab one of the flowers to ingest if he wanted to.

Mountain ash. All along the perimeter, lining each wall and occupying every dark corner of this abysmal prison.

There's not so much as a pile of hay to sleep on in his cell, so Derek curls up close to a wall and with nothing better to do eventually gets to sleep again.

 

It's screaming that wakes him next. Blood-curdling, hair-raising, agonized screaming.

Derek is on his feet in an instant, slightly woozy and, though he wobbles, he remains standing. His senses sharpen and he zeroes in on the direction of the horrible wailing. He hears a frantic heartbeat alongside a quick, but steady one; a raucous rattling of metal as someone struggles against restraints; a high-pitched whir that sounds suspiciously like a bonesaw.

Then Derek hears the muted whirring, overlapped by the sick, meaty, crunch of flesh and bone being forcefully separated from flesh and bone.

Derek jerks back and tunes his hearing out, focusing instead on the rapid thrum of his own heartbeat, the salty smell of his fear-sweat.

The screaming stops about forty minutes later.

Derek doesn't want to think about what that means.

 

Stiles comes in the next day. Derek assumes it's the next day although the room is windowless and he has no other means of telling time on hand. The human had confiscated all but his jeans and t-shirt when he first took him; he even took his socks and shoes.

The door opens out into the hall, so it doesn't disturb the mountain ash. Stiles smiles widely when he sees Derek is awake, sitting upright, body positioned squarely with the door. There is nothing warm about the boy's smile and that same dull-edged disinterest from when he burned holes in Derek's arm is in his eyes.

"I brought you some food," he says, then tosses in a pair of raw steaks.

Derek makes no move to retrieve the meat and Stiles studies him for a minute or more.

"You seem to be doing well," Stiles says as if complimenting him on his shoes.

Derek would not call this 'well,' thank you very much.

"I always worry a tad about putting werewolves in this room, you know. The wolf's bane is only meant to hamper your supernatural gifts a bit, keep you more manageable, right? But if a werewolf isn't in top condition when they get put in here, it can make them horribly sick. I learned that the hard way. Not pretty. All that black gunk that comes out of you? It just gets everywhere. Really useful though. Did you know that? It's actually a toxin that a werewolf's body produces in response to the poison in your system. You vomit it up because your body is trying to get the poison out, even though it can't. But what it does manage to get out of you is basically a substance designed to fight against all things that aren't sympatico with werewolf biology. Of course that means it only affects certain species of supernatural creatures. I've discovered that their predisposition to reject lycanthropy is what does it. Can't turn into a werewolf if you're already something else, right? So anything that can be turned is safe from it, but anything that is resistant to werewolf bites will be grievously affected by that black stuff your kind spits out when it's sick. Isn't that fascinating?"

Stiles has joy dancing in his eyes and he waits to see a spark of something similar in Derek's. There is none forthcoming.

Stiles inevitably frowns, in a rather childish sort of way, then shrugs. "Guess you're not into science. Oh, well."

He shuts the door without so much as a backward glance at Derek and his footsteps carry down the hallway.

Derek waits until the sound fades completely and then goes over to the steaks. He inspects them carefully for any signs of tampering or poison. When he finds none, he eats them quietly then drinks from the spigot stuck on one wall, washing the blood away from his hands and face and into the small rectangular drain below.

 

Stiles talks a lot. Derek imagines that he doesn't get much company down here in his dungeon.

Derek learns that Stiles' has been at this for ten months. That's he's gotten quite good at what he does. That the wolf's bane vines over the door are one of his own creations that he calls _Aconitum Serpentium_. That in ten months he's captured, tortured, and tormented eight different species of supernatural creatures, all in the name of science.

Derek's stomach turns with each new piece of information the madman reveals about himself and his experiments.

 

On what he thinks is the fourth day, if the meals are anything to go by, Derek figures out what it is about Stiles' eyes that seems so off. It's mania. The worst sort. A bone-deep, all consuming focus that drives him to act upon that single desire and nothing else. It hides in the back of his eyes like a shadow waiting to strike at the most vulnerable moment.

Derek wishes he could reach the taunting purple flowers.

 

One night Derek is awoken suddenly by an alarming ruckus. He's on his feet in an instant, ready for whatever may be coming. He hears a shout that sounds like it belongs to Stiles. Something hits the door followed by a sharp cry of pain, also likely belonging to Stiles. Derek hears Stiles' sharp intake of breath, braces himself. In the next moment the door splinters apart and a huge, black beast bursts forth. It's similar to a wolf, but far too large, far too strong to be anything but supernatural. It's not a werewolf, of that Derek is sure; it wouldn't have been able to get through the mountain ash  Derek doesn't know what the hell it is, but it sets its sights on him as soon as it enters the room and lunges to attack.

Derek's reflexes have been slowed by the wolf's bane, but he's still fast enough to dodge it, simply because he was ready for it. The thing turns and pins him with enraged, cloudy gray eyes. It snarls viciously, but once, and then it makes for Derek again.

The werewolf isn't fast enough this time and its massive jaws clamp down on his shoulder. Derek cries out in pain and pries the teeth out of his flesh. He's barely holding the creature back from snapping down on him again, when out in the hall Stiles rises to his feet, shaking his head muzzily.

"Get this thing off of me!" Derek shouts.

Stiles snaps back into himself, eyes wide as he takes in the scene. There's but a moment's pause before he's darting off in the _wrong direction_.

"Keep holding it!" Stiles shouts over his shoulder.

"Like I have a choice," Derek grumbles, panting short breaths out through his gritted teeth.

A growl like a racing engine rumbles continuously from his opponent's chest and every few seconds it surges forward, tries to push through Derek's defenses. Stiles better hurry, because any time now it's going to succeed.

Thankfully Stiles reappears quickly, holding a syringe with something murky-looking in it. He rushes forward and stabs the needle into the thing's hide and pushes the plunger down.

It shrieks horribly as white steam pours out of its eyes and mouth. When it finally stops, it collapses, a heap of stinking flesh and dirty fur. It's not dead, but it's quite close.

Stiles exhales loudly in relief, sagging a bit.

"Oh, thank god. Wow. My bad. I thought it was a warg or a crocotta or something. But it was a pricolici apparently. Undead. Totally different. Mountain ash won't hold them. You have to use salt." He taps the syringe. "Saline solution. Shouldn't kill him, but he'll be down for a while. Whew. Man, that was close."

Derek isn't really listening to him. His attention is far too affixed to the mountain ash barrier that's been broken by the scattered pieces of the door. Stiles seems to realize this, following Derek's gaze and he freezes when he sees it too.

His head whips back around to Derek and his gaze hardens in a cold fury the likes of which Derek has never seen in his life.

" _Don't_."

The command is like a sentencing, the word that brings down the guillotine, the verdict that hangs a man.

Derek locks eyes with the human and stands absolutely, completely still. He's not even sure why, but in that moment something in Stiles' eyes terrifies him more than the undead wolf monster at his feet ever could.

"I have worked _too hard_ for this to all go to hell because one little werewolf gets away. If you try to escape, I won't kill you, but you will wish that I _had_ ," Stiles says, voice low and sharp. Dangerous. Deadly. "You're not going anywhere. Understand?"

Derek pauses for a moment to consider his options here. He can't escape. Not now. Not yet. But perhaps he can arrange a better situation for himself, one that could lead to a later escape.

He nods seriously. He has to play this right. "I understand. I wasn't going anywhere. It's not like I have anywhere to go."

Stiles looks mildly curious at that, but his face remains hard and his stance unmoved. "You couldn't possibly want to stay here," he states.

Derek shrugs. "Maybe if I wasn't trapped in this room all day...maybe if I could help you out like I did just now." He shrugs again. "Maybe it wouldn't be so bad."

Stiles' expression changes and Derek knows he has him.

"You could be helpful…" Stiles says, considering. "Someone to do all the heavy lifting. Hold the subjects down while I strap them in. I mean, I've managed, sure, but it certainly hasn't been _easy_...Yeah...like an assistant. I could use an assistant."

A devilish gleam creeps into Stiles' eye and Derek isn't positive he hasn't just signed his own death warrant.

He smiles at Derek, all teeth, and declares, "Seems I've found a use for you after all. So do I get your name now? Or should I just call you Igor?"

Derek steels himself for whatever horrors await him beyond this room. Then he says, "Derek."

Stiles grins, cruel and cold. He extends a hand that Derek reluctantly shakes.

"Welcome aboard. Derek."

 

'Horrors' might not have been the right word for what Derek faces in Stiles' lair. The sheer revulsion that he feels upon seeing the "fruits" of Stiles' labor is enough to make Derek have to hold down the urge to vomit _several_ times. The experiments--the abominations--range from various body parts floating in jars to whole bodies pinned to the walls like bug specimens. There's room after room of Stiles' crimes against nature, nineteen "samples" in all.

"I've studied _a lot_ ," Stiles brags as he takes him on a tour. "Gotten my hands on some pretty juicy bestiaries over time. Done some nasty things to get them too, but well, the ends justify the means here, I think."

 _What ends could you possibly be achieving through this?_ is what Derek thinks.

"So," Stiles says, once they're in the main lab, a large round room full of machines and instruments Derek wants nothing to do with. He thinks his family used to use this room for werewolf-basketball matches. "Let's get started on that pricolici, shall we?"

 

The first time Derek has to hold down a screeching imp with a mouth full of sharp teeth and a face full of fear he almost fails miserably. The imp's bony fingers and fluttering wings are almost enough to undo his strong grip. Stiles is quick to spritz it with liquid nitrogen and the hellfire creature shudders into stillness, body shrivelling under the cold. Stiles gets it contained to a bottle with minimal trouble after that.

Then he turns around and scolds Derek for underestimating the imp just because it was small and warns him against doing it again. Derek takes his chastising silently, obediently.

Then Stiles flashes a smile at him and he laughs as he says, "If an imp gave you trouble, wait until we find a fairy. Those suckers are slippery _and_ mean."

 

Fairies do prove difficult. Derek does not walk away from that initial capture unscathed.

He pokes and pinches at the little bleeding punctures sprinkled over his arms. They're not healing and they feel like ants crawling under his skin. He knows it's because of fairy dust or some bullshit.

Stiles approaches him, smiling, with a mason jar in his hands.

"I warned you about the fairies," he teases gently. Then he unscrews the lid from the jar and scoops out a dollop of something that smells like metal and causes Derek's nose to scrunch. "Iron ointment. It'll negate the effect of their magic."

Stiles carefully doctors each and every one of Derek's wounds with a glob of the stuff. The wounds seal up quickly after each application.

It still makes Derek feel a lot better about the whole ordeal when Stiles cuts off the fairy's hands while it's still alive to investigate the source of a fairy's magic.

 

"What is that?" Derek asks one day.

Stiles is carefully filling small vials with a thick, clear substance, while wearing large rubber gloves that go all the way up to his elbows.

"Kanima venom," Stiles replies without taking his eyes off his work. "First creature I acquired, a kanima. That lizard thing at the end of the hall, you know?"

Derek knows. The scaly _thing_ that Stiles has tubes running in and out of where it sleeps in a large holding tank filled with some sort of solution.

"The venom paralyzes anything with just a touch," Stiles goes on. "It works even faster if injected into the bloodstream. I've got traps set around the entire forest. One of them is what got you actually. You didn't think little ole me was managing all of this by myself without a secret weapon, did you?" He says it with a teasing smile, a playful glint in his eye.

Derek doesn't know what he thinks. He honestly has no idea what Stiles is capable of.

 

Stiles is really excited about the mermaid.

"I never get aquatic stuff!" he squeals.

Derek follows him around the lab, collecting bottles as Stiles pulls them down from their shelves.

"Oh, we'll _have_ to try chlorine. And I'm thinking sodium nitrate… Oh! Definitely sulfuric acid!"

Derek rolls his eyes and girds himself for the smells to come.

 

Stiles has an interesting amount of "chemical imbalance" going on. He tells Derek that he's ADHD, which Derek can see when he switches between bouncing around the lab like an overly excited puppy, and attacking his notes with a laser-like concentration, wringing conclusions out of them with a precision that any scientist worth his salt would admire. During a dissection he's calm and focused and clinical like a professional. It's a thing of beauty to watch him work.

But Stiles also has those moments where something doesn't quite add up, those experiments that are still missing a piece he can't seem to get his hands on to split open and look inside. Those moments are the ones where he appears truly psychotic. He carries on like he's two people having one conversation, muttering to himself and challenging himself and arguing with himself about his worth and his work and his waste of a life. He always comes out in the end resolved that his life will _not_ be a waste and more resolved than ever to capture new test subjects.

Derek sort of admires his determination.

 

A gash the size of Texas runs across Derek's back, inflicted by a rowdy wendigo. He peels his shirt off gingerly, while Stiles rattles through rows of bottles behind him.

"Ah, here it is. This should slow the bleeding," Stiles says, moving closer.

The medical touch that Derek is expecting is not what comes next. Rather, a hand lands lightly in between Derek's shoulders blades. Derek manages not to flinch, but he does tense up, unaware of what Stiles is doing exactly by touching his triskele.

"I didn't know you had a tattoo…" Stiles says, a hint of wonder in his voice.

He presses his warm hand flat over the werewolf's smooth skin. Then he drags it down over the marking, fingers trailing behind palm, until they abruptly meet the edge of Derek's wound.

Stiles seems to be brought back to the matter at hand. He mutters, "Right. Bleeding. A lot. Right," then goes about gently applying the cool ointment onto Derek's heated skin.

After a pause Derek says, "It was my pack's symbol."

Stiles' hand stops moving. "It's beautiful," he says quietly.

 

"Really, Stiles."

"Really, Derek," Stiles sasses right back.

Derek sighs in that put-upon sort of way he has and then twists to get a better angle.

"Who puts talons down a drain?" Derek asks pointedly.

"I didn't put talons down a drain!" Stiles insists. "I poured the solvent down the drain when I was done with it. How was I supposed to know there were six in there?"

"Did you look at the harpy claw _before_ you dropped it in?"

"Just unscrew the damn pipe and get it out."

 

Stiles has a plentiful supply of test subjects, Derek learns, because of something called the nemeton that draws them to these woods. Stiles says he's studied nemetons in depth as well and has learned to increase the reach of its frequency by manipulating its natural electric currents with man-made ones. He guesstimates that with his tampering the full range of the nemeton's pull is about six hundred miles in each direction.

Derek still isn't sure where Stiles gets money or equipment or food. He prefers not to ask.

 

"Pass me the sucrose, will you?"

Derek obliges Stiles' request, observing as he coats a scalpel in the sticky compound. He makes yet another delicate incision in the ghoul's flesh, then waits to see if that gets a reaction.

Ghouls don't feel much pain, but Stiles is dead set on finding something that can change that. He's hasn't had much luck so far.

"Hm…" Stiles hums thoughtfully. "Let's try bleach. You never know what you'll get with that."

 

A scientific textbook about supernatural creatures. That's what Stiles' goal is. To learn absolutely everything he can about the way they work and consequently how to take them apart, so everyone can know.

Derek doesn't ask why, knows that whatever the reason is, it's what made the light in Stiles' eyes go out a long time ago and replaced it with this.

 

Boggarts explode.

Derek didn't know that. Apparently neither did Stiles.

"Come on, Derek," Stiles presses. "That's the whole point of scientific exploration."

Derek wipes innards off of his face, scowling deeply at the scientist. "To get covered in viscera?" he spits nastily.

"No, to find out what happens when you do, you know, something to something else."

"It _exploded_ , Stiles. We could have died."

Stiles waves a hand unconcernedly. "We wouldn't have died. It was just a boggart."

Stiles has a gnarled finger sticking out of his collar that he doesn't seem to notice. Derek reaches forward and plucks it out, tossing it to the ground.

"It won't always be just a boggart," Derek says quietly.

Stiles blinks, momentarily thrown off. He rallies himself and shoots Derek one of those genuine, mirthful smirks that are appearing more and more of late. He says, "Look, I didn't know about the exploding thing. My bad. I'm sorry. But, trust me, if something really is going to be dangerous, I'll tell you beforehand and let you leave if you want to. This wasn't dangerous, it was just...messy. Promise to give you fair warning next time."

Derek stares at the mouth that has never lied to him and wonders if he should go ahead and trust its owner.

 

"Is there a name for giant spiders?" Derek asks.

Stiles glances up at him, secures another clamp on another leg, while Derek digs his elbow into its abdomen to keep it still.

"No, just...giant spiders," he replies with a shrug.

"Are they the same as regular spiders?" Derek wonders.

Stiles shrugs again. "I don't know. But I imagine we're about to find out. Bring me the large forceps, please."

 

Stiles is stitching a werewolf arm onto a werecoyote when he casually drops the Argent name.

Derek drops the tray he's holding.

"How do you know the Argents?"

Stiles looks at Derek in alarm, eyes wide and concerned. "Derek…" He reaches out for him, but Derek jerks away.

He should have known. He should have known an undertaking of this measure was their work. He should have known that Stiles was just one of their pet projects.

Stiles looks at Derek in shock for a moment more before his face smooths out into an emotionless mask. He says, "My father was the Sheriff."

It seems like a non-sequitor, but as Stiles' story continues to unravel, Derek can see that it's not.

"I don't know if you knew that… He started up an investigation that had something to do with a family burning alive several years ago, when two of the three survivors of a fire turned up dead."

Derek's heart is in his throat and he can't swallow it back down.

"He got too close to figuring it out…" Stiles says, somewhere far away now, lost in a memory. "Gerard Argent used his kanima to kill him right in front of me. I had... _no idea_ what was happening. What that _thing_ that tore my father to pieces was… I guess Gerard thought my shock...and my fear...and my sorrow would keep me from interfering. He didn't count on my anger outweighing all of those things.

"I shot him with his own gun. That's apparently all it took to take down a glowing-eyed man. I would later find out they were wolf's bane bullets and he was a werewolf and, after I dissected him, exactly why wolf's bane kills werewolves.

"The kanima became mine. Gerard's bestiary became mine. And after some skilled hacking, his bank accounts became mine...and here we are…"

They look at each other for a long time, really _look_ at each other. For the first time Derek sees Stiles as a seventeen year old boy, who has suffered a great loss, and he realizes quite abruptly that he's looking at himself from long, long ago.

Derek always wondered what Stiles' story was. He never would have dreamed their stories were one and the same.

He wants to say thank you for some reason. For perhaps getting some sort of retribution for his family when Derek couldn't. All that comes out of his mouth is, "I spent ten months running from Kate Argent before you found me. I'm Derek Hale."

Stiles mouth drops open in surprise. A flicker that means he's putting all the pieces together flashes across his face and then he's looking at Derek with something like understanding.

Derek thinks he's heard the thank you anyway.

 

They're sitting in a storm drain, one of the ones that leads in and out of the tunnels, taking a break from the burnt-flesh stench the experiments on the kitsune cultivated and watching the rain.

Stiles sips at his cup of hot chocolate slowly, savoring its warmth and flavor. He's only wearing a thin hoodie and the chill of the wet woods causes him to shiver occasionally.

Derek doesn't say a word when he drops his leather jacket over his shoulders, or when Stiles leans into him a little bit more to steal away his body heat.

 

The banshee they captured is still sobbing softly from her cell. Derek faces the direction of the sound without even realizing it until Stiles' voice comes from just beside him.

"Derek?"

The werewolf blinks out of his daze and looks at him. He's been standing there holding his toothbrush for a few beats too many, it seems. "What?"

"Something wrong?"

"No. The banshee. She's still crying."

Stiles clicks his tongue disapprovingly. "Still? Let me go sedate her."

Stiles disappears before Derek can say a word and a couple of minutes later the girl begins screaming things like 'no' and 'stop.' Then there's blissful and utter silence.

Stiles returns with a pleased smile stamped on his face. "There. All taken care of."

"You didn't have to do that. I can block it out."

"But that sounds like a lot of work just to get to sleep. It's easier this way."

Derek looks at Stiles' gesticulating hands that take away as much as they can from everything they touch and wonders if anything about this situation is really easy.

 

The thing is though: it is easy. Life with Stiles is simple, uncomplicated. It's just the two of them and a never-ending line of test subjects to work on. They wake up, they talk, they cut someone open, and they go to bed.

Derek isn't really sure when he stopped planning to escape and started planning on building Stiles a new shelf for his jars of severed heads (he always keeps the heads).

But tracking the beautiful flutter of his hands as they pluck an eyeball out of a Dullahan's head and watching the joy that graces his features as he expresses his excitement for when they finally find the body--Derek can't seem to care.

 

Stiles follows a lead on joggers being exsanguinated at a certain point on the running paths and Derek follows him.

They almost turn up nothing, until Stiles suddenly gets snatched up by one of the very trees themselves.

"What is it?" Derek shouts as he claws at branch after branch.

"I don't know!" Stiles shouts, panic clear in his voice.

"How do I kill it?"

"Don't kill it!"

"Stiles!"

"Just stop it! Don't kill it!"

" _How?_ "

"I don't know! Just do something!" Stiles has both hands scrabbling against the wood, trying to dislodge himself.

Derek goes about attempting to dig the thing's roots out of the ground in hopes that it will weaken enough to get Stiles down. His head snaps up, when Stiles screams, to see that the spindly twigs of the tree are turning tubular and sharp. One of them stabs straight into Stiles' sternum.

Derek forgoes digging and rips the whole damn tree out of the ground. It makes a horrible screeching noise and then goes rigid and still like a tree should be.

Derek yanks the branch out of Stiles' body and then lowers him to the ground.

"Stiles. Stiles! Are you okay?"

Stiles coughs a little, bats Derek's hand away from the sluggishly bleeding wound on his chest.

"Fine, fine," he gasps. "It didn't get very much."

"Very much _what?_ " Derek demands, hands shaking.

"Blood," Stiles says, laying flat on the ground. He sighs, then sits up, frowning. "Vampiric tree...that rings a bell…"

"Stiles…" Derek says, exasperated.

Stiles looks at him curiously. "What?"

"Don't ever do that again," Derek says.

Stiles grins at him. "Worried you were going to lose me?"

"Yes," Derek says emphatically, then grabs the back of Stiles' neck and yanks him in for a kiss.

Stiles pulls back harshly and Derek thinks for a split second that Stiles doesn't want this from him, that it's all over. But all Stiles does is exclaim, "Jubokko! That's what it is!"

Then he's crawling into Derek's lap, mouth too preoccupied to say anything more on the matter.

 

The ghost is a bit tricky. Stiles manages to contain it by some small miracle, but he has no idea where to go from there.

"How does one go about studying something that's not corporeal?"

Derek comes up behind him, loops his arms around Stiles' waist, and tucks his chin into his shoulder.

They're both quiet, thoughtful, for a moment.

"You could freeze it," Derek suggests.

Stiles perks up at that. He turns around in Derek's arms and plants a kiss firmly on his mouth.

"You're brilliant. Go grab my goggles."

 

"Derek!" Stiles exclaims angrily.

"I didn't mean to! It just came off!"

"You and your stupid werewolf strength."

"You weren't complaining about my stupid werewolf strength last night when it was holding you up against a wall, while I--"

"Derek! So not the point right now!" Stiles shouts over the caterwauling. "Now pass me the friggin' arm!"

Derek hands over the moist, mossy appendage he just tore off of the bog monster writhing on the ground. Stiles takes it and looks between the sundered shoulder and the frayed edge of the arm. They're both leaking something green and foul smelling.

"Hm," Stiles mumbles. "It's all right. I should be able to reattach it. The question is: do I want to?"

Stiles leans in to get a closer look. Derek considerately ceases the creature's flailing by planting a railroad spike through its chest.

 

Stiles wakes up sad one morning and Derek looks at him and lets his expressive eyebrows ask what's wrong.

"It's been one year," Stiles says, "since...all this began."

Derek interprets that as meaning it's been one year since his father's brutal murder.

He knows better than to mention that, so he says, "We should celebrate."

Stiles looks at him with shadows forming over his face, fury rising.

Derek clarifies. "All that you've accomplished. We should celebrate."

Stiles' face clears to make way for a small smile that blooms into a fully-grown, beaming grin, as Derek watches, fascinated by it.

"Yeah. Yeah, we should."

 

Stiles commemorates by posting about it on the internet. He's apparently made quite a few supernatural-savvy contacts in his quest for knowledge and he shares his success with them on their forum.

"Look, Derek. They're calling me "The Supernatural Surgeon." They asked if that's what S.S. stands for. "The Supernatural Surgeon…"" Stiles marvels at the nickname, the _title_ , grin quirking his lips upward. "Kinda has a nice ring to it. It's technically incorrect, I mean I'm not really a surgeon, just a scientist, but...yeah. Yeah. The Supernatural Surgeon. What do you think, Derek?"

Derek gazes into amber orbs that burn anew with purpose, with life. "I think you've earned it," he says.

Stiles has never smiled wider.

 

"No, no, no, a little higher."

Derek sighs. "Stiles. They're not curtains."

"I know, I know, but I want them to look nice."

"For who exactly?" Derek asks sarcastically.

"For you, you dumbass. Now shut up and move it back down just a little."

Derek sighs again, but does as he's told.

"There! Perfect!" Stiles exclaims and Derek marks the spot with a pencil, then hammers the nail in.

When he's finished hanging the last piece, Stiles claps his hands gleefully and urges Derek over with a wave.

"Come here, come here, come look! It's perfect!"

Derek tromps over to stand beside Stiles. He turns around to admire his handiwork, snaking an arm around Stiles' waist while they stand back and look.

It _does_ look nice, the heads of the Argents mounted on their wall all in a neat row.

 

The Alpha Pack inevitably comes looking for The Supernatural Surgeon after his internet popularity climbed to their notice, intent on destroying him.

Their arrogance makes it easy for a clever little human like Stiles to lay a trap for them. It's quite easy for him to coat the walls in scentless kanima venom and get them to touch them while dodging the fake booby traps he rigged in the tunnels.

The Alpha Pack is a fascinating study for Stiles. The power dynamic alone is unbelievable. He spends extra time pushing the limits of the twins' transformation, slicing open their seams over and over again. Derek is actually starting to get bored with it when Stiles finally says he's ready to work on Deucalion.

"Fetch him from the Iron Maiden, would you?"

Derek happily does just that.

 

A woman called a darach tries to steal the nemeton's power out from under Stiles.

Stiles takes great pleasure in recording each and everyone of her weaknesses.

When he gets to red-hot pokers, he may go a little too far with them, past the realm of scientific discovery and into the realm of sadism. Derek doesn't see the harm in letting him have a little fun.

 

Stiles twines their fingers together as they sit in front of the roaring fire. He's sipping hot chocolate again and gradually curling into Derek more and more.

The orange glow from the flames lights up Stiles' face and makes him look unearthly and beautiful. He looks so serene as he watches the flames dance. Derek had to wait a long time for this moment, for Stiles to finally finish up his latest experiment, but now that he's here he thinks it was worth every second.

He kisses Stiles softly on the forehead, a silent show of gratitude for the perfect evening.

Stiles smiles up at him and asks, "Another limb?"

Derek nods and tosses the lower half of a leg into the fire.

His uncle really should have stayed dead.

 

"The cops are asking questions in town."

Stiles stops what he's doing, wipes the blood from his hands, and turns to look at Derek.

"What kind of questions?"

"The kind that come when too many people have gone missing in these woods. They're bringing in the FBI."

Stiles' expression goes cold. "They can't possibly know what they're looking for."

"No. Of course not. But they'll be looking for something. I think we need to be careful."

"I think you're right," Stiles agrees.

 

Derek stands outside their recently purchased cottage and rests his head on top of Stiles'.

"I like it," Stiles says.

"Me too," Derek agrees.

Then they both stand there waiting for the other one say what they're really thinking.

It's Stiles that does it. "It's not home," he says sadly.

"We knew it wasn't going to last once the feds showed up," Derek says gently.

"I know, but still...all my stuff...we had to leave so much of it behind, Derek. All my equipment, my specimens, my tools…I barely managed to get anything out before they came."

"You still have your notes. We don't have to start over completely. At least there's that."

"Yeah, I guess" Stiles says on a sigh.

"Look at it this way: the police will never notice any people from _these_ woods disappearing."

"That's true. No one will ever find us here."

"Exactly."

Stiles still doesn't seem totally convinced of their new home. He's been rather depressed ever since their den was discovered by the police and they had to flee the country after the massacre that ensued. He hasn't even been interested in taking anyone apart and putting them back together recently. It's worrying Derek a little. It feels like Stiles has lost his spark.

Derek looks up at the dark, imposing canopy of the trees. The wind howls loudly above the branches, barely making it through the thick foliage to caress Derek's face. Nightfall is drawing nearer and already the forest is taking on a sinister quality. It makes Derek grin, sharp and feral.

"You know…" Derek begins slyly. "They say there are centaurs in this forest…"

Stiles brightens a little. "Centaurs?" he asks cautiously.

"Yeah. Centaurs," Derek whispers enticingly into Stiles' ear.

"Half man, half horse…"

"Yep," Derek says, feeling the excitement begin to thrum through Stiles' veins as the scientist stares out into the woods.

"I need one," Stiles says suddenly, determined in that way that Derek has admired for so long now.

"Then let's go get one," Derek grins against his cheek.

 

"There's probably tons of creatures here that we didn't have in America," Stiles says as he pulls up what's known about their target.

Derek hums, leaning over his shoulder to look at the screen. "Didn't even think about that, did you?"

Stiles shakes his head. "I was too upset we had to leave in the first place. But here... _Here_ is the _birthplace_ of things that go bump in the night. It's perfect."

"I thought so," Derek says proudly, mentally patting himself on the back for an excellent choice.

Stiles grins up at him. "You did good."

Derek is pleased to see the return of his dear mad scientist, the mania emblazoned in his eyes.

 

They set off at twilight. They find a centaur before midnight; their first capture is a roaring success.

The Black Forest is the perfect home for them. So vast, it's nearly endless in its bounty. So feared, its darkest depths are nearly avoided entirely by humans. The creatures that live within it are the stuff of legends, monstrous and frightful and mysterious.

It's exactly the right sort of setting for The Supernatural Surgeon to make history.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween! Thank you for reading! 
> 
> http://mommymuffin.tumblr.com/


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